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Contrast of LCD Display’s
I am planning on buying a new monitor. Right now I’m thinking of the Apple 23″ HD Cinema Display. It’s beautiful and it’s Apple. But There are nice Dell monitors that are 23″ inch and have some serious inputs, like component. But they have a contrast ratio of 1000:1 and the Apple 23″‘s have a contrast ratio of 500:1.
Can anyone explain to me if the Dell’s are twice as good contrast, or too much contrast. Also if I get the Dell, how different would an image look on that versus on an Apple monitor? Twice as dark or washed out?Matt James
Freelance FCP Editor -
3 Replies
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Matt,
I am not a huge fan of any of the current crop of LCD monitors when it comes to displaying full motion video, because they all have slow refresh rates, however let me explain something about contrast ratios. I think you may be confusing brightness with contrast/contrast ratio. Contrast ratio has to do with the range of colors (shades of gray in this case) between absolute white and absolute black. It is these shades of gray which give the video image its definition, and the greater the contrast ratio, the greater the perceived definition.
For example, imagine an extremely high contrast image with only two shades of gray, i.e. black and white. This image would be said to have a contrast ratio of 2:1, and as you can imagine the image would not have an awful lot of definition. Many fine CRT monitors have 5000:1 or 6000:1 contrast ratios, however in the world of LCDs 500:1 and 700:1 is common, as it costs more to create higher contrast models. Dell is claiming 1000:1, but I doubt you would notice the difference.
Hope this helps…
DRW
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[David Roth Weiss] “For example, imagine an extremely high contrast image with only two shades of gray, i.e. black and white. This image would be said to have a contrast ratio of 2:1, and as you can imagine the image would not have an awful lot of definition. Many fine CRT monitors have 5000:1 or 6000:1 contrast ratios, however in the world of LCDs 500:1 and 700:1 is common, as it costs more to create higher contrast models. Dell is claiming 1000:1, but I doubt you would notice the difference.”
By definition, contrast ratio is the luminance of the full black compared to the luminance of the full white. But don’t beleive the numbers… there are always ways for the manufacturer to cheat about specs. There are quite a few monitor reviews out there that test various brands, and some LCDs have black levels comparable to the finest CRTs.
James, in my experience, Apple LCD monitors tend to crush the highs and have a bit of banding, but behave really great othewise. But beware that many ppl experienced a pink cast with the 23″ model…
there was a nice and deep monitor shootout on anandtech: https://www.anandtech.com/displays/showdoc.aspx?i=2400
it compares the 20″ apple to the 20″ dell, but it should give you an idea. -
Manufacturers contrast ratios are usually a load of bunkum. There’s as many ways to measure them, and fiddle the figures that they’re not even wort looking at.
The brightness of an LCD monitor can be very high indeed, and indeed, increasing the brightness can lead to a higher contrast rating, but often this will be done with a brightness that’s too high to use. I generally knock the brightness right back on all my LCD monitors to produce a more useful picture. Black levels are very hard to get lower, and they’re the real limit on contrast. However, the practical contrast levels of both decent LCD and CRT monitors are very comparable because CRTs have a problem where bright areas halo and glow into surrounding darker regions to a much greater extent than happens with LCD.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP
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